The odd, cheerful shape of December 2024
Some months tell a clean story. December 2024 was not one of them. The list our readers built was scattered in a way we found genuinely charming: a pair of sandals in the middle of winter, a building set, a keychain, a griddle, and a roll of mounting tape. If you are looking for a trend here, you will not find one. What you will find is a snapshot of five different households.
The gifts
The Mega Construx Halo Shipmaster building set was the clearest holiday purchase of the month. Licensed building sets occupy an odd niche, bought roughly half by children and half by adults who will not admit it, and this one moved steadily through the first three weeks of December before availability got thin.
The NFL rhinestone heart keychain is the exact category of gift that our readers are quietly excellent at: small, specific, and impossible to get wrong if you know the person's team. Several readers mentioned buying more than one.
The out-of-season purchase
Then there is the strange one. Birkenstock women's flip flop sandals in December sounds like a mistake until you read the notes. Some of it was travel. Some of it was people buying for a warm-weather gift. And a surprising number of readers said they simply buy summer footwear in winter on principle, because the sizes they need are available and nobody else is competing for them. We have written before about how the calendar and the shelf do not agree with each other, and this is that idea in practice.
The things that make a holiday work
The Addis griddle returned for a second month in a row, which almost never happens on our lists. December is a month of feeding people at odd hours, and a large flat cooking surface solves that problem better than adding another pan.
And the most unglamorous item of the month, 3M VHB heavy duty mounting tape, had the most enthusiastic notes attached to it. Readers used it for hanging decorations without putting holes in plaster, for securing a loose panel in a car, and in one memorable case for mounting a mailbox that had been leaning since spring. It is a strong adhesive, it is not easily removed, and everyone who wrote in about it wanted to warn the next person about exactly that.
What a scattered month is worth
We like months like this. A tidy themed list usually means everyone was reacting to the same event at the same time. A scattered list means people were solving their own problems. Our favorite version of this community is the second one, where the deer hunter, the collector, the parent, and the person fixing a mailbox are all in the same conversation and none of them think the others are strange.
Heading into January, expect the mood to change. It always does. The month after a gifting season is the most practical month of the year, and next month's list will look almost nothing like this one.
As an Amazon Associate, Mia Blogs earns from qualifying purchases. Availability and pricing change; check the product page for current details.